


So Leave Me, Whatever

by stargirl_caraway



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, because I'm an angst whore, westallen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9589988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargirl_caraway/pseuds/stargirl_caraway
Summary: Barry has to go on a dangerous mission, but Iris fears for him and wants him to stay, just this once.





	

I Hate You (I Know)

 

He was doing it again. Asking her to be all right with him leaving her, like he always did.

 “Don’t go,” she pleads.

“I have to go, Iris, I’m sorry.”

She shoves his hands from her waist, and her heads shakes back and forth in anger, hair flying. “I hate you so much, Barry Allen.”

“I know.”

“Can’t the world be saved without you? Just this once?”

“Iris…”

“I’ve let you go and waited for you so many times my whole life. You know I would never ask you to stay for me, that I’m not that selfish. But it isn’t just about me. We need you. Your children need you!”

“Do you think I want to go? You’ve known me almost my entire life. You know me better than I know myself, Iris, so you know that I have to do this. Even if I don’t want to. Even if it means I might not come back.”

As soon as the sentence leaves his lips he wishes he could take it back. Barry watches her face crumble and sees the tears that had been pooling in her eyes, unshed, finally pour down her cheeks.

He steps forward to gather her in her arms but stops when she recoils and turns away from him, wrapping her own arms around her body, as if to comfort herself.

“I hate you.”

“I know. I love you.”

“Don’t say that! You’re going to leave us—leave me—so what does it matter if you love me? I need you to love me enough not to go for once.”

Barry walks up behind her, gently grabbing her shoulders and rotating her body so that she faces him again.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tries to reassure her, though she won’t even look up at him. “I only make promises to you when I desperately need to be able to keep them, right? Well, this is me, promising to come home. I want to stay with you and our babies, safe in this house, forever. I would give anything for that. But I have this power for a reason. So that I can use it to make this world a better place, a place worthy of you and our kids.”

Iris draws in a shaky breath. Barry sees the tear that plops onto the carpet when she squeezes her eyes shut. She nods her head, and when she speaks again it’s quiet and unsteady. “I just—I’ve had this bad feeling for the past two weeks, and now when you talk about going and ending this I feel like I’m going to be sick, Barry. You’ve handled monsters like this before, and I’m always terrified that something will happen to you, but this time it feels different. I can’t breathe when I think about it, and I just know that if you go I’ll never see you again. Don’t go.”

“Iris…”

She abruptly jerks herself from his grip and looks him in the eyes again. He wishes she hadn’t though, because he hates seeing that combination of fire and distress.

“You aren’t listening! I know what’s going to happen.” She backs away quickly when he reaches out to her again. “Don’t touch me! I hate you for this, Barry.”

He watches her move to the couch, brushing tears from her eyes and sniffling. His phone rings in his pocket, and he doesn’t need to check it to know that the team is waiting for him. But he can’t just leave his wife, his best friend, in her current state, so he mutes it and walks to where she sits on the couch, kneeling in front of her. Her face is in her hands and shielded by a curtain of hair. Watching her like this makes his heart ache. She’s never reacted like this before to his duty to the world, to him having to leave her. But that’s Iris: never wanting to worry anyone with her own problems despite years of him trying to reciprocate her support for him.

“Iris, I’m going to come home to you, I swear.”

She lifts her face, and he reaches and brushes away the tears that are still streaming from her eyes.

“Okay.”

He sees the doubt that still lingers, but his phone is vibrating in his pocket again, and he knows he has to leave _now_.

“I have the league. They’re a bunch of idiots sometimes, but we have each other’s backs. You know we do. I’ll be okay, and then I’ll come home, and we’ll talk about this.”

“Okay.” She nods her head, but her stomach feels like it did the first and only time she’d gotten on a boat. She had spent the whole ride vomiting into a bucket.

“I love you, Iris. I’ll see you soon.” He waits expectantly for her to say something, but all he receives in return is her looking up at him with those big brown eyes and more nodding.

Her eyes follow him to the door, while her mind argues two sides. She can be vindictive and hurt him how he’s hurting her. Let him go, leaving her like this again and knowing that she hates him in this moment…or do what she really wants to do. Say goodbye to her best friend.

Anyone would think she’s the one with superspeed just then, because she reaches him in…a flash. Before he even notices her running to him, Iris’s arms are wrapped around his shoulders, squeezing him with as much strength as she can muster from her petite frame.

“I love you. I know you have to do this, just make sure you come back to us.”

She draws away, and they share a kiss, lingering the way used to for every kiss early on in their relationship.

When he’s gone and she has the apartment to herself, she mechanically goes to their bedroom and pulls on one of his sweatshirts. Back in the living room she turns the television to some trashy reality show and curls up in a blanket, happy that the kids are spending the night with Paw Paw so that she can indulge herself in the old routine again.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you enjoyed whatever that was. Either way, thanks for reading! 
> 
> This was 100% inspired by the song "I Hate You" from the musical If/Then, only I didn't have the courage to kill off Barry.


End file.
